


Ethon

by Ori_Cat



Category: Incarceron Series - Catherine Fisher
Genre: Culture Heroes, Gen, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-12-06 16:36:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11604579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ori_Cat/pseuds/Ori_Cat
Summary: Every culture hero was someone else first.





	Ethon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ThornedDream](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThornedDream/gifts).



From the very beginning, there were always two of you. 

* * *

_Do not_ , it told you once, just as you were fixing on the last feathers, drawing the edges of your secondaries between your fingernails to smooth them. Do not even try. 

“Why not?” you ask, and it just laughs (because this is something you would know, something every man would know if there were not such a dearth of books in your world of the future imperfect. If there were stories that would not be your own). 

No-one may steal from Incarceron, but you are aiming to take its sky away. 

* * *

It slides an Eye over, after, and holds it over your forehead almost like a kiss. _What did you learn?_

You cannot say much; there is no room in your lungs for the words around the blood and the torn ends of your ribs. “You are cruel.” 

_Debatable. What else?_

Here is what it wants you to say. Be not prideful. The heavens are not for men. Stay in your world of death and sorrow and no more turn your eyes upwards. Were there not such a dearth of books, perhaps you would know that your line now. But there is and so: 

“I will not relent,” you whisper. 

_Good. Because neither will I._

* * *

And here is what nobody realizes about being a hero: it is all too easy to befriend your villain. Especially when they are always there, waking, sleeping, eating, you look up and meet their eyes. 

_Next time?_ it asks, as you kneel by the shoreline and spit out water (it’s the oldest trick in the book, but if it works it works, and you would take the cold and the wet over being dead any day). 

“Sure.” It’s not like you have a choice in the matter anyway. 

“When again?” you turn at the mouth of the cave: your body feels like dried grass but your lips bleed and for now that is enough for you. 

It blinks one great slit-pupilled Eye. _Soon._

* * *

_What do you care?_ it asks once, its Eye hovering on a tendril just above your shoulder where you sit on the flat roof with an apple you stole from a market stall watching the people walk through the streets below you. 

“What?” you ask, and kick your heels against the wall. 

_All the humans. All the ones you speak for, all the ones you fight for. What makes you care about them?_

“Well I _am_ a human, you know.” 

_Are you?_ it asks. _Are you really?_

“ _I_ think so,” and you take another bite, filling yourself with juice and pulp and the taste of apple and theft, “and mine’s the only opinion that matters.” 

* * *

_Next time?_ it whispers, as you sit at the hole you’ve carved in the floor and kick your heels in the tunnel of nothingness. You will come back? 

“Yeah,” you answer. Not soon. Not because you miss it, of course. When stone is worn away to meal, when the stars fall from the sky, in the hour that the world ends - then, you might see. You might be all right to give up a second of the world Outside. “I will come back.”


End file.
